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Just look at OJ's "search for the true killer" http://worldwidemart.com/sapienza/html/oj/

Oh, the noise!!!

There's a fix, if you use formmail. Go to Matt's Script Archive to get it.

Second, while your approach may have cut it back in 1996 when Matt Wright gave it away, it doesn't address many of the security issues that have crept up, some of which are listed in an article Lincoln Stein wrote for the W3C.

Third, if unedited, versions of FormMail as exampled by your site, can become a major spam producer. In large part FormMail uses that HTTP variable for your e-mail address we talked about earlier. This allows Spammers to easily abuse your form to distribute their messages. Moreover, unless you capture and forward their IP, you give then the anonymity.

Finally, why write so much stinking (and unsecure code) ? By using CGI.pm, you can address some other security issues. You can avoid having to put your 'hidden' arguments in your HTML. With the addition of a few other libraries, you can address a variety of other security issues while significantly reducing your effort.

IN other words, work SMART and HARD !

Thousands of sites are using formmail.pl - if there was some vulnerability there, it would have been abused by now. I have seen this script abused as an open relay, but I think you can restrict the recipient in a configuration file or in the code..

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Computer companies prey on this with mindless technobabble like "internet ready" or "fully RFC compliant", and customers are the ones that end up being swindled.

Some people make this out to be exclusive to the computer industry. It's not. Ever seen Joe Average in a department store, shopping around for a refrigerator? Or a stereo? Or a TV? The salesman will play on his ambitions, desires and sexual neurosis; he'll spit out a few product stats, maybe show some brochures, and before poor Joe knows it, he'll be walking out with a huge refrigerator for his one-bedroom home, or a pathetic "home entertainment center".

And don't get me started on cars. Jesus. Sometimes I go with my drivin' friends to the mechanic and just watch as they are completely played, even the more technically savvy of them.

The point being that not everyone is an engineer - in fact, outside of his area of expertise, everyone is a layman and thus subject to some eventual suckering. The difference with computer hardware is the incredible rate of adoption; everybody's buying it, and most people don't really understand it, so this phenomenon becomes somewhat more evident.

By the way, regarding the part about "we, an enlightened (one would hope) group of tech-heads"... well, there are certainly many exceptions, but I wouldn't say the average Slashdotter is "enlightened", not in the least. The average Slashdotter is no hardware expert, who probably doesn't even understand digital logic. He's a "webmaster", a "Perl scripter" who picked up programming in junior high and to this day writes code which somewhat resembles Matt Wright's. He only comes into contact with hardware in the context of graphics cards, sound cards, overclocking or whatever else that may "enhance the gaming experience".

The Average Slashdotter, in conclusion, is Rob Malda. (Minus the piles of IPO cash.) Sad but true.

P.S.: I'm one of the few people I know who bought an iMac because of the innards. :)

We had to do something very similar to this. Basically we just modified the wwwboard.cgi script at Matts Script Archive. But I agree with several posts made earlier, there are Lots of similar programs like the one you're looking for at Freshmeat Good Luck!

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You're right. :)

(or, as Homer's Doh's are written in the scripts for each week's episode: (Annoyed Grunt!)

Sam Jooky

Cat guts not your style?

She's the opposite of Homer. You can't deny he's probably a right-winger, and he goes all the way along the political spectrum to the realm of hard-core, crazy gun toters!

Sam Jooky

Cat guts not your style?

The episodes I like the least are the very early ones, with the concentration on Bart. Back then, the show seemed to be very much aimed at children. When Homer came to the fore, so did the increasing use of satire and parody and it became a cartoon for grownups.

Man, I love that show. :)

Cat guts not your style?

If it's Perl you're looking to get into, the Great O'Reilly offers up a number of books, including Learning Perl, Programming Perl, Advanced Perl Programming, the Perl Cookbook, etc. Start out with Learning Perl. Some other posts mention Python, which is also good for CGI, and you can pick up O'Reilly's Learning Python and Programming Python. Be forewarned, though. I've used both for CGI programming. And when I'm using Python (powerful though it is), I find myself longing for the regexps of Perl.

If you'd like an online tutorial, you might want to check out The CGI Resource Index, which is made by the same guy as Matt's Script Archive. Between the tutorials on the Resource Index, looking at the source of Matt's script, and reading the O'Reilly books, you can learn just about anything you want to know about Perl.

Of course, if you get stuck, you can always go to ng's, irc, or your local Perl nut.

Lately I've been running around town rezoning and putting in waterworks and schools and raising taxes. Sometimes I tear down a church and fill it in with small parks.

Needless to say, the city council is not happy with my actions. They are seeing firsthand the evil effect of some simulation games: city planning.

Sam Jooky
http://www.worldwidemart.com/sapienza/s alad

Enough of the rank and file in the Forest Service, however, complained about how absolutely crappy the system is that we're now switching over to Microsoft Office. I'm no fan of Microsoft, but I don't mind not having to use Applix anymore.

I agree with all your complaints, but the worst part to my mind is that Applix more or less decided to use all their own shortcut keys for common operations. You wanna paste? Try F5, or F6, I don't recall.

Applix mail is atrocious, too. It's slow, the interface is horrible (click here, then type here -- hands always moving from keyboard to mouse and back), and it's just a hassle to use.

I have avoided using AW as much as possible -- it's just too obnoxious to be worth the trouble.

Sam Jooky

Where's my Burrito? Where's my Burrito? Where's my Burrito?
http://www.worldwidemart.com/sapienza/s alad

I ask because among the main three authors (well, to my opinion: yourself, William Gibson and Neal Stephenson), there is little common ground except for technology, and that's not even always true. What defines a book of the 'cyberpunk' genre (if there is such a thing)?

Sam Jooky
http://www.worldwidemart.com/sapienza/s alad